Ground milling machines are used wherever the removal of ground subsoil material to a desired milling depth is required. Typical areas of application are, for example, in the form of road milling machines for the removal of road cover layers, in the form of so-called stabilizers and/or recyclers for road and pathway construction, and in the form of surface miners for extracting mineral resources. Generic ground milling machines are disclosed, for example, in the patent applications EP 2 578 749 A2 and DE 10 2010 050 441 A1, to which reference is hereby made.
The operation of such ground milling machines is comparatively costly, so that the demand always exists for the most optimum possible machine operation, for example, with respect to the lowest possible fuel consumption and, at the same time, the highest possible milling performance.
In the patent applications DE 10 2012 006 189.7 and PCT/EP2013/000686, which are hereby incorporated by reference, a drive device for a self-propelled construction machine, in particular, a ground milling machine, and also a method for setting a rotational speed ratio in such a drive device, are described. The present invention is suitable, in particular, for application with this drive device or this method. An essential aspect of this patent family is that a rotational speed variable operation of the milling drum is possible. In practical use of such machines, it has been shown that various operating optima, for example, the optimum of the milling performance, i.e., the milling volume per unit of time, for example, in cubic meters per hour, and also the optimum of the milling performance efficiency, i.e., the milling performance per fuel consumption, are not always achieved with higher rotational speed of the milling drum. The rotational speed of the milling drum here refers to the number of revolutions of the milling drum about its axis of rotation per unit of time.
An object of the present invention is therefore to specify a method for optimizing an operating function of a ground milling machine by way of adaptation of operating parameters. A further object of the present invention is furthermore to specify a ground milling machine which enables carrying out such a method.